Recent Terrible Call Quality on my two 928s

I got a 928 on launch day (May 16, 2013) and never had any call quality problems on it until a few months ago where the audio speaker (if my ear is pressed up against the front facade of the phone) would go in and out, making it difficult to talk and therefore forcing me to use speaker mode (where there weren't any problems). I finally called Verizon about it and, from their end, they "re-synced" me to their towers. That didn't work, though, so I called back and the new guy deemed that because I was having these problems regardless of what U.S. state I was in, and because everything worked fine in speaker mode, that it must be a hardware problem.

Thus, as Verizon is keen to do, they sent me a refurbished device. Of course, I don't want a new device as it means I lose all my Xbox game saved data, but making calls is pretty important to. Just today I booted up the new phone (I have to send the old one back tomorrow) and it initially seemed better. However, the audio problems seemed to be inflicting this phone as well: several times in my most recent call the speaker went soft, making it hard to hear my discourse partner. I slapped the back of the phone (as I used to do on the old one when it had the same problems) and it kind of 'kicked' the audio back in. What is going on here? It's highly unlikely I got two defective phones.

I find it unlikely you got 2 bad devices as well. But, if Verizon swears they have things right from their end, I do not see what options you have except to exchange them or do a hard reset on one to see if it ends the problem. I understand not wanting to lose your data, but you either get anew phone or reset it, so either way you are out.

By the way, it is not impossible this has happened to both units. I had 3 bad devices in a row (the old HTC Titan), and 2 of them were bad the exact same way. It happens, even if unlikely. Simple math: If 10,000,000 phones are sold, and only 2% are bad in the call quality, that is still 200,000 bad phones. If you got two from the exact same factory when this fault occurred, you could have beaten the odds.

Hope this works out for you. I would take the new phones and see if that works.

Verizon called me back and said there is nothing wrong on their end. So, that leaves me with a dilemma. Keep the old phone where the problem was quite poignant but which I have a year's worth of Xbox game save data, or keep the new phone which seems to be better but which still has problems and lose all saved game data...

Unfortunately no one seems to have gotten any satisfying answers after over a year of complaints popping up, and the refurbed units are just as likely to experience the same problem (as yours did) as not.

Unfortunately no one seems to have gotten any satisfying answers after over a year of complaints popping up, and the refurbed units are just as likely to experience the same problem (as yours did) as not.

Well, how about that. I absolutely hate it when I call a company up, explain a problem, and then the support people either have no idea about the problem or pretend not to know, and then it becomes clear that it's a huge problem, as the thread you linked to demonstrates. I called Verizon several times about that and each agent I spoke with said they had never heard of such a thing. Seriously? They don't know what's going on in their own support forums? I had a similarly bad experience with Lenovo over various Yoga 2 Pro problems.

Anyway, I got another refurbished 928. Things seem better now--for now--but I also lost the ability to re-download my favorite Windows Phone game because Microsoft delisted the game. Grrr... This is not how you win over new customers or retain current ones.